Valentine's Cookies

My roommates and I spent some quality time this weekend making some Valentine's Day sugar cookies and listening to Shania Twain.  We had so much fun and they turned out SO good.  I started with this great dough recipe from Betty Crocker.  If you like almond extract, at all, I really suggest this recipe.  It stays soft after it bakes and tastes SO good.  The cookies also keep their shape well, which is nice.


Betty Crocker Sugar Cookies

1 1/2	cups powdered sugar
1	cup butter or margarine, softened
1	teaspoon vanilla
1/2	teaspoon almond extract
1	egg
2 1/2	cups all-purpose flour
1	teaspoon baking soda
1	teaspoon cream of tartar

1. Mix powdered sugar, butter, vanilla, almond extract and egg in large bowl. Stir in remaining ingredients except granulated sugar. Cover and refrigerate at least 2 hours.

2. Heat oven to 375ºF. Lightly grease cookie sheet.

3. Divide dough in half. Roll each half 1/4 inch thick on lightly floured surface. Cut into desired shapes with 2- to 2 1/2-inch cookie cutters. Sprinkle with granulated sugar. Place on cookie sheet.

4. Bake 7 to 8 minutes or until edges are light brown. Remove from cookie sheet. Cool on wire rack.  I doubled this recipe that it made about 50 cookies.

After the cookie dough was cooled, I rolled it out and cut it with my really cute V-Day cookie cutters.  I have a kit from Williams Sonoma that you can use to stamp words into cookies.  I used my own cookie cutters, but used their word stamps to get this little message in them.  It turned out SO cute!

We also tried some other messages.  MI ELGNIS means "IM SINGLE" backwards.  Yeah, it's hard to figure out those cookie cutters.

Also, if you don't have a Silpat, I would suggest it.  It was a Christmas gift and I LOVE IT!!!!  Nothing sticks to this baby!

After the cookies baked, they looked like this...

This first cookie was made using the cookie cutter that came with the WS kit.  It was a little bigger than I needed, but it was adorable.

I made some royal icing and dyed it cute Valentine's Day colors!

And then we started decorating...

This last cookie we made by dying some dough red with food coloring.  We mixed the white and red dough a little bit and it turned out marbled like this.  These types of cookies are cute because you do not have do put that much frosting on them to make them look nice.  This is good for people who are trying to cut back on sugar or just don't like frosting.

We took these cookies and put them in tiny bags I got at a cake store.  We tied them with some ribbon and then I gave them out to friends at school.  Everyone loved them and they looked adorable.

This "be mine" cookie was the best.  It just looked SO SO SO cute.  

This was a great project, not too hard, and so fun.